


The Best Medicine

by Laeta_eterna



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Awkward Sexual Situations, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Pining, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Power of Love, Sexual Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:33:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24142126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laeta_eterna/pseuds/Laeta_eterna
Summary: Pivotal moments of inappropriate laughter in Atton and Meetra’s relationship. (Rating is for Chapter 4 if you're impatient ;)
Relationships: Female Jedi Exile/Atton "Jaq" Rand, The Jedi Exile/Atton "Jaq" Rand
Comments: 11
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

**1.**

**Meetra**

“Nice outfit – what, you miners change regulation uniform since I’ve been in here?”

After 10 years more or less on her own, Meetra Surik had grown very unself-conscious. But it hits her in an instant what this man must be seeing. She’s wearing some kind of modest bathing suit that feels like it’s made from a grain sac. She can feel the kolto residue matting her hair and congealing on her skin. She looks absurd. She looks absurd, and she’s running around a space station where everyone had been murdered but her, a shifty woman mistaken for a corpse, and this guy in the brig. She looks absurd, and she can feel the Force again…? This entire situation is absurd. _And how did I even get here?!_

She snorts. Powerfully. Again. And then the laughter overtakes her. She’s gasping for breath, and her abdominal muscles start to shake, forcing her to double over. Her face, chest, and back are painfully sore, but whenever she tries to stop convulsing, she’s confronted with the utter hilarity of her circumstances again and forced to resume.

General Surik would have felt that the present situation demanded grim seriousness. People were dead, after all, and the way out was far from clear. But General Surik was gone, lost somewhere in exile. The Exile knew that, sometimes, all there was to do was laugh. Maybe she would die today. Others already had. But, right now, she was laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe. And it was exquisite.

Finally, she’s beginning to catch her breath. She feels high, almost like she’s had an orgasm. _Thanks, guy._ She straightens, still loosing the odd chuckle, and approaches the man in the Force cage. When she sees him look at her, she realizes her face is flushed, and she’s still grinning. Though obviously pleased with himself, he’s doing his best to look unimpressed.

“Wasn’t that funny.” He snarks, suppressing a grin.

For a moment, she’s almost triggered again. Sighing and wiping away a tear, she answers simply. “It was to me.”


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

**Atton**

“Atton, you have a special skill. It could help the mission. Please, show me.”

He knows why he hesitates, but he can’t say. He also knows he can’t keep refusing. Seeing no alternative, he acquiesces. “Fiiine, follow me.”

He leads her to the cargo hold and takes his mark near the door. “You stand there.” He gestures across the room with a raise of his chin. “I’m more senior in the forms, so I stand nearer to the exit.” He clears his throat. “Now, as you know from the Handmaidens on Telos, traditional Echani fighting is done with almost no clothes.”

She nods, taking this reminder in stride.

“It wouldn't be anything I haven't seen before, of course." He winks obnoxiously. "But is that not… in conflict… with the Jedi Code?"

“Oh, no!” She waves a hand dismissively. “No, Jedi are actually quite cavalier about nudity. They don’t consider it inherently sexual. You wouldn’t be the first naked man I’ve seen by a longshot.”

Atton blinks. Normally when presented with such an obvious opportunity, he’d make a crack, but he’ll have to process that one later. “How about the first to grapple with you hand-to-hand?” He persists, convinced she’s not getting it.

“Atton, we don’t have to follow the Echani way _exactly_ if you don’t want to.” He muffles a sigh of relief.

*******

The kick of a small bare foot flies past his ear, effortlessly dodged. He was winning.

He shouldn’t let it go to his head. She was new to the form, after all, and refraining from the use of Force powers. Though after seeing her take down at least a hundred enemies over the course of a few weeks, he had still half-expected her to win their first match. She seems unfocused, not at all the way he’s seen her with a blade. He had been so preoccupied with keeping his clothes on (well, the light underclothes that preserved the _spirit_ of the tradition) that he’d forgotten to ask her about her experience with hand-to-hand. Perhaps she was too used to armed combat, or perhaps without the Force he was just physically stronger. _She’s pretty damn strong, though,_ he thinks, grunting as he catches the full force of her fist in his palm.

He decides he’s done teaching and ready to win this round. He pivots from a defensive form into an offensive form, leaning forward into her upper body. She dodges and keeps her balance. _Nice one_. But she doesn’t see the leg swinging behind her knees. When her backside strikes the floor, she is already rolling onto her shoulders, preparing to spring up. But it’s too late—he’s on top of her.

Kneeling astride the defeated Meetra, Atton is a gracious winner. “Okay, that wasn’t so bad for a beginner—" until suddenly he’s clenching his thighs to keep from being thrown off of her.

Incredulous, he looks her in the face and finds her panting, flushed, eyes blazing. Defiant. “I never” she draws a heavy breath, “yielded.”

“ _Oh ho ho_ , you will!” It doesn’t matter that, by Echani rules, he’s already won. He will hear her admit defeat. He pins down her arms at the wrists easily and leans in over her face to accept her surrender. Half of her hair has fallen loose from her braid and is splayed on the floor around her. She still has that fire in her eyes, and it sets his nerves ablaze. Without warning, she's sliding down between his thighs and he has to shift his weight directly over her wrists to keep them in place. He can't help wincing a little sympathetically as the slender bones grind into the metal floor, but she doesn't betray any sign of pain.

Incredibly, she hasn’t given up. When she turns and nearly slips a knee under his thigh, he slams her back flat on the ground with his hip while simultaneously extending the opposite knee to pin her other leg at the thigh. From there, it’s trivial to pin the offending knee in place.

The match is definitively over now. He has all four limbs pinned, and her vain struggling proves she can’t throw him. _Admit it, you’re mine._ But second after second passes and she just keeps writhing under him. Their breaths are still heavy, but beginning to steady. She’s so warm and enveloping, flush against him. And there’s something about her face. It’s radiant. She’s stopped squirming. She’s looking straight up at him, biting her lip against a smile. _Fuck. I’m staring._ It takes him only half a second more to register how _firmly_ his body presses against hers…

 _NO. No no no no no!_ The color completely leaves his face. It was so much worse than he had feared... With impressive speed and grace, he lifts vertically off of her, minimizing any further movement of his dick against his captain’s midsection. Freed, she turns onto her side and buries her face in her elbow. She’s trying to be discreet, but the shuddering rise and fall of her back is unmistakable. He’s left stumbling backward towards the cargo bay door, finally turning to bolt in earnest when she lifts her hand and calls after him in a low voice. “Atton,” she waves her hand a liitle too vigorously to underscore the levity of the situation, “there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s just a physical reaction to all the contact. I’m—” she draws a steadying breath, “I’m sorry I laughed—it was more how you reacted than the—” he tenses, “—uh, inciting event. I promise I’m not offended or bothered.”

Atton’s horrified stare had remained fixed outside the door as she spoke. Now that she had finished, he looks to the ground and mumbles, “Thank you,” before hurrying off to the refresher. Later that night, when she knocks on the cockpit door (not usually locked or even closed), he doesn’t answer. She says only “I forgot to tell you before. Good match! You beat me fair and square.” He’s still being pelted with waves of embarrassment, but he smiles at that.

It isn’t until the noise throughout the freighter stills and everyone else is in bed or meditating that he feels able to put the mortification behind him. Other memories from the day prove more persistent, however. The radiance of her face. The fire in her eyes. Her warmth and the way she squirmed under him as he held her down—the sensation of her hasn’t left his groin since. His hand drifts low, and in his mind, the spar ends very differently.

What he doesn’t know is that, across the ship, in Meetra’s bunk, something very similar has already happened. When she felt tired—too unfocused to get any work done—and was the first to retire to the crew quarters. Just another physical reaction to all the contact.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets a bit dark, something that's going to remain throughout the rest of the story. But there's also laughter!

**3.**

**Meetra**

When she finds him in the cockpit that night, his façade is polite and deferential—very un-Atton-like—but underneath he’s churning. It's as though he can only stay in one place because he’s torn between bolting and vomiting.

“Atton, I’ve meditated on what you told me today, and I want to train you in the Force.” She takes his hand. Startled, he looks up at her. A wave of his shame and self-loathing crashes over her, but her eyes don’t waver. “I forgive you.”

He shakes off her hand. The façade cracks. “Train me as a Jedi if you want, but you’d be a fool to forgive me. You don’t know the half of what I’ve done.”

“Here’s your first lesson: there is no evil, only ignorance. All beings have a goodness at their core, and they try to realize that goodness in their nature to the best of their ability. What looks like evil is really ignorance, a misunderstanding of how to be happy within ourselves and with others. This is why awakening to wisdom is the foundation of training in the Force as a Jedi. You aren’t fundamentally flawed or bad. If you had known then what you know now--” her voice drops low, perhaps observing the reverence Atton had shown for this woman's memory in the refugee sector, “—what _she_ taught you—you would have acted differently, as you did after you knew.”

“Funny…” The façade is gone. His voice drips sarcasm. _He's angry I mentioned her,_ she realizes. “At the time, it really felt like I was motivated by hatred, revenge, the power, you know? But now you can let my victims know I was actually motivated by _goodness_. Too bad so many of them are dead."

She doesn’t take the bait, only presses her lips tight.

He wants her to react, to push him away. “Didn’t matter to me who I was torturing. Or killing.” There’s real anguish in his eyes when he asks, “ _What if it had been you?_ "

She frowns minutely in empathy, but stands her ground.

He growls and throws up his hands in frustration. Turning back to the pilot’s seat he mutters, “Forgiveness is too easy.”

“Nothing easy about it.”

He freezes.

She hadn’t meant it to sound so scathing. He had finally gotten to her. For a moment, she is sick again at the thought of him torturing Jedi, _loving_ to kill. She imagines him, face full of sneering cruelty, looking right into the eyes of his victims as he breaks them. Anger flares in her. _How could he?_

But then she sees herself on the bridge of a warship, destroying a planet thousands of miles below with a nod of her head.

She laughs. Bitterly.

What did it matter that he was close and she was far away? That the expression on her face was grim instead of eager? That she felt it all up until the moment she felt nothing? In the end, they were the same. They followed Revan. Revan followed the logic of war. She had agreed about Malachor. Atton had agreed about Jedi. Until he didn't.

He turns to face her again, confused. Registering his wounded expression, she hastens to clarify. “It’s just, who do you think you’re talking to? An entire planet is dead because of me! You’re right, I fantasized about what a relief it would be to be _executed as a war criminal_. I wanted to die the moment I gave the order. I wanted to pay for what I’d done. _That’s_ the easy way. But that’s not how it works. Death doesn’t repay death—it multiplies it. And refusing forgiveness doesn't honor the suffering you’ve caused—it propagates it.“

His mouth hangs open. She doesn’t know why she sounds so angry.

Softening, she concludes. “No one deserves forgiveness, Atton. Forgiveness is given, not owed. But if I can accept it, so can you. I trust you and I forgive your past.”

He’s blinking at her, still dumbfounded and a little scared. On impulse, she reaches out tentatively, placing her hands on his elbows. Receiving no resistance, she wraps her arms around his back and brings her ear to his chest. His heartbeat spikes and then begins to calm. She feels herself calming, too, with her cheek pressed against his thin shirt, feeling the warmth of his chest and breathing in the scent of his sweat. Mira had been telling Atton to bathe more almost from the minute she boarded the ship, but Meetra is secretly pleased that he won’t. She likes a little musk. She’d gotten used to her own ripe scent during her wanderings, and she finds his comforting. Human. She smiles when, finally, she feels his hand slide up between her shoulder blades.

After another minute he pulls his chin up and back, indicating for her to look up at him. There is no more talk of forgiveness. “I want to learn how to use the Force. I want to learn how to use the Force to help you.”

 _Good enough for me._ “Then I will train you, Atton.”

“Is there some… some ritual, or…?”

Meetra steps back a hair and takes his hands in hers to ground him. “Just close your eyes. And open your mind.”

She waits to feel him settle and unfold. But it is as he and Kreia said—his mind is difficult to sense. She doesn’t dare enter his mind actively, so she doesn’t really know how receptive he is to the Force when she proceeds.

“You must learn to feel it around you, feel it’s currents, it’s eddies.” She feels his warmth and the strange simmer of his presence in the Force. What he feels he does not betray.

“Listen to the echo of your thoughts, your heart—separated from war, from hate.” He squeezes her hands, and suddenly she can’t feel any Force presence from him at all.

“Think of what you felt when you felt the need to help me, to protect me.” In the silence she hears only her own heartbeat.

“And at last, Atton, awaken…”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating is for this chapter ;)
> 
> Warning that Atton expresses a lot of shame in his inner monologue.

**4.**

**Atton**

She’s been unusually quiet tonight. The reflected light of hyperspace unfolds across her eyes, but her gaze is beyond it. It made him nervous to see her so unwary of her surroundings. She shouldn’t trust anyone this much. _Lucky for her, I’m a_ reformed _Jedi-killer_.

No, tonight, he’s just perving. She wouldn’t notice him right now if he ogled her wide-eyed with his jaw on the cockpit floor, but still he peers clandestinely from the corner of his eye. She’s curled up in the co-pilot’s seat, chin hovering over her knees. The streaming soft blues and whites of the hyperspace tunnel pool in the kinks her unbraided hair and illuminate the tops of her bare feet. He’s tracing the curves of her lips in profile when he sees them part. It’s his cue to redirect his gaze.

“Atton, have you ever been in love?”

The question makes his heart seize, even though he’s pretty confident she doesn’t suspect. _Probably still thinking about Revan._ She had been gobsmacked when Mandalore—somehow another close friend of Revan’s—had told her that he was married. Besides, she was always asking him about the seedier side of life she missed out on growing up as a Jedi. (That was their relationship. She taught him the mysteries of the Force; he taught her that "death sticks" were not weapons and she did not want to buy any.)

After fiddling uselessly with some buttons on the nav console, he answers with as much casual disinterest as he can muster. “Once. Nothing happened. She never knew.” It’s always more effective not to lie outright.

She turns her head to face him, resting one side on the padding of the co-pilot’s chair. She has the air of one emerging from deep reflection, an image enhanced by the cool blue lights of hyperspace rolling across her face. “You didn’t love your sexual partners?”

He bristles. _What are you, an asexual alien sent here to study this thing called love?_ “Not really, no. But I appreciated the favor.” Actually, he had compensated most of them financially.

She ponders this for a moment, then resumes her interview. “Who did you love? I guess if you loved her that means you never had sex with her?”

“No… it was just regular old unrequited love.” His chest crumples, but he does his best to hide it.

“But you said she never knew. Maybe you didn’t know how she felt. How do you know she didn’t feel the same?”

“I just know she didn’t, okay?” He snarls.

Perhaps in an attempt to change the subject, she barely changes the subject. “How can you have sex without falling in love? They always told us the pleasure was _so intoxicating_ and the emotions were _so powerful_.” She titters. “And coitus was supposed to make us instantly pregnant.” She effects a voice and manner he doesn’t recognize, presumably one of her teachers. “ _And what good is a pregnant Jedi, Padawan?_ ” Her impression collapses into giggles. This is all so funny to her. The fact that her laugh is so adorable makes it all the more infuriating.

Exasperated and hoping to offend her, he snaps. “Surik, you’re always asking me about this stuff. I’m sure any man would be happy to teach you about casual sex if you’re so curious—you’re not a Jedi anymore, at least until we get to Dantooine. I know I’d much rather volunteer for teaching than for storytime.”

Meetra falls silent as her gaze falls to her hands. Atton instantly regrets what he's said. “I’m sorry, that was out of li—”

“Okay.”

Atton’s entire demeanor changes. He turns to her, utterly stunned. But there she is, looking sweet and earnest and 100% serious.

“If I had thought that had a chance in hell of working, I would have come on a lot smoother” then, more quietly, “… and a lot sooner.” She only looks at him, eyes bright and breath becoming shallow.

Still not believing this is happening, he confirms, “Do you mean it? Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” she doesn’t miss a beat, “I’ve always wanted to understand sex, and you’re right, this could be my last chance.” Atton’s heart sinks at the practical reasons furnished, but his pulse quickens, and further down something else is reaching its full height. He hates himself because he knows he won’t resist the chance to be with her no matter how much pain it causes him.

She gathers that he feels unwanted. By way of reassurance, she offers, “I experience sexual attraction to you, Atton.”

“ _Pfft!_ ” With great difficulty, he manages to choke down his guffaw instead of spraying it all over the nav console. “Do you have to say that like a droid?” He’s laughing into the goofy, incredulous grin spreading across his face. Her face goes red. He stiffens his neck and shoulders and darts his head back and forth, imitating HK-47’s tinny vocabulator, “ _Observation: My circuits register sExUaL arousal in your presence, Atton._ ”

She brings her hand to her mouth to stifle peals of laughter. Both of them are heaving, their muscles sore, gasping for air that they can’t keep down. The bristling tension he felt a moment ago is broken open, and his skin is tingling with aliveness. Readiness. Meetra rolls out of her seat onto the floor, slowly regaining her breath as she staggers over to the pilot’s seat on all fours. Atton turns to meet her where she stops, and just the way she’s looking up at him—flushed, warm brown eyes shining, biting her lip—has him throbbing. Her eyes are moving back and forth between his, studying him.

“Atton, I want you.”

He hesitates, taking in her perfect, willing face and hating himself for wanting more. He’s lying to her—she wouldn’t do this if she knew what it meant to him. But in another instant, he’s taking her face in his hands and kissing her full on the mouth. He leans longingly into the kiss and sends her crawling backwards on her palms. He descends from the pilot’s seat onto his knees. Sliding the fingers of one hand deep into the roots of her hair to cradle her head, he brings her to the floor. Her liberated hands begin to search him, waking every nerve. His free hand slides beneath her shirt, then beneath her bindings, lingering for just a moment on a thick scar he finds beneath her left breast. Her fingers, on his neck and threaded in his hair, go slack and as he brushes her nipple. She groans, eyes closed and mouth open in an indefinite gasp. As he grinds against her it’s as if he draws the energy from the beautiful agony on her face.

He needs more—he needs her to feel more. He slides his fingertips just beneath the band of her leggings. Her eyes snap open, finding his eyes already there. She looks back and forth between them again, questioning. Trusting. She’s looking for guidance. His chest swells. He passes her reassurance as he confidently slips his hand down her leggings, past her underwear, and ultimately within her. She is utterly helpless at the touch. It only takes a few strokes for her to come undone. She throws her head to the side and whimpers as her chest and abdomen heave. Something blooms in the pit of his stomach as she writhes and gasps at the lift of his finger. _Power_. His hard-on is crying out for attention where he ruts it against her thigh, but it can’t compete with the raw sexuality of her complete surrender to his touch. He sees her climax crossing her face just as he feels a mounting crescendo in the Force. There is a tightening around his fingers as she bucks against him. He has to shift to raise her face to his chest to muffle her cries, and he rocks her there until they’ve ridden every wave.

When she stills, he lets her go limp and rolls onto his back beside her. Watching her come and feeling it in the Force gave him a sense of release as well, even though his erection is still raging. He reaches for her hand and feels a limp squeeze. She’s still jumping and whimpering. He’s already feeling a stab of shame at the memory of her enraptured face. He remembers another Jedi, whose name he doesn’t know but who is never far from his mind. He got off to the look on her face, too, when he had power over her.

“Wait,” comes Meetra's voice beside him, weak and breathy, interrupting his ruminations. “We’re not done.” She shuffles off his hand and Atton jumps at where hers lands.

“Don’t worry, speedy! We’ve got time for you to… catch… your breath.” She’s already exploring the shape it makes in his pants, gently stroking the length of it. Absurdly, he’s trying to hold on to his guilt as the tide of soft sensations threatens to wash everything else away. Her touch is cautious and slow. She’s exploring him out of her own curiosity. And yet in his heightened state of arousal this is already the greatest sensation he’s ever felt on his dick.

His eyes flutter open and register the ceiling of the cockpit. He feels the floor beneath him and the hum of hyperspace. She’s stopped. Her hand is frozen, curled around his belt buckle.

“Everything alright?” _Coming to your senses?_

“Atton, what about pregnancy?”

 _Phew!_ “I have the shot. Just got it renewed.”

“And…” she whispers, “ _diseases_?”

“Clean.” He smiles reassuringly. “Just got tested.”

“When?” she asks, puzzled.

“Nar Shadaa.”

“Who were you planning on—”

He rolls to his side and rises to his knees. “I wasn't joking about the Red Sector. But then I ended up covering _your_ ass the whole rest of the time instead. Don't worry about it.” He leans down and kisses her, feeling the questions still on her lips. He reaches for the band of her leggings and she raises her hips to allow him to remove them. When his fingers graze a very sensitive spot, now exposed, he feels her lips slacken and her inquiry items melt away. “You know I wouldn’t have it any other way.” She flashes a quick smile, barely hearing, between shuddering breaths.

He pulls back and takes her in. She is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, laying on the floor of a freighter, long hair splayed all around them and plastered to her forehead with sweat, clothes disheveled, pushed and pulled halfway off. It’s all perfect in the glow of her pure face as he works inside and outside of her. He’s more turned on than he’s even been in his life, and perhaps because of that, the shame returns. _I don’t deserve this._ There is a sadness pulling at him from deep within, a truth he doesn’t dare acknowledge even to himself in this moment. _She’ll never feel the same way._

"Atton!” her impassioned grunt breaks his reverie, “Please…” _gasp…_ “I want you to… I want you inside me.”

“Are you sure?” He asks tenderly, picking up the tempo with his hands. “It might not even feel so good—first time can hurt.”

“You felt my scars.” Her eyes roll back in her head momentarily. He’s enjoying this. “I think I can handle it.” She gathers her will and shoots him a wicked dare with her eyes. Atton accepts the challenge.

In a flash, his belt buckle thuds to the ground and his pants are gathered around his knees. Meetra rises shakily to her elbows to get a glimpse of his erection. Crouching, he meets her eyes and leans in over her, intent like a stalking beast. She yields, dropping to her back and looking up trustingly from the freighter floor.

“Here.” His voice is tender, as if it, too, had shed its clothes. He takes her hand and guides it to the shaft. When her fingers brush it, she smiles with evident fascination. She begins to search it, squeezing it a little to test the tumescence. The sensation alternates between intense arousal and tickling. Smiling benevolently, he cups his hand around hers and brings himself into position. “You direct it, and you control the pace.” He lightly strokes the head up and down her opening to get her started. “This might feel good. Or this.” He leans in ever so gently from the hips, but he can tell from the way her eyes draw closed it’s enough.

It’s a slow process. He hadn’t really known what to expect. Most of the women he’d been with had been “experienced,” to say the least, and none of them had been virgins. _Doesn't help that I'm hard as durasteel._ It’s not exactly sexy to watch her wince in pain, and especially not to feel the echoes of it in the Force, but the intimacy of it is intense and gratifying. In this vulnerable moment, she’s letting _him_ take care of her.

The further she lets him in, the harder it becomes not to thrust. He begins to curl rhythmically at his core, barely avoiding any movement at the hip. The urge is getting too strong. “Meetra, I…”

She wants it, too. “Do it, Atton.” She nods, smiling nervously and drawing in a heady breath. For another moment he remains still inside as he kisses her. He’s taking in her smell, feeling her hair between his fingers where he cradles her head. Preparing himself to get lost in her. She begins to undulate, urging him to start. When he does, she gasps, startled and relieved. The kiss grows deep as he takes more and more and she allows it. She feels like a dream. She’s enveloping him completely, blotting out the ship and the void it’s suspended in like they never existed. Soon, he knows not what their bodies do, only the sensations between them. The universe is not around them, but inside them: in their mingling heat, in the slow and steady rhythm their bodies negotiate, in the pleasure radiating through them from where they connect. Until he spills over into her—pressing her close, nose buried in her hair, their moans sounding together barely heard in some distant world—he can’t even hear the voice in his head saying _she doesn’t love you back_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See comments for some technical notes/musings.


	5. Chapter 5

**5.**

**Meetra**

Meetra wakes to the rise and fall of her head on Atton’s chest. _He’s so warm._ She lingers on him for a moment as her senses return. She’s sore from sleeping on the ground, and there’s a new awareness of her vagina that will take some getting used to. _Not a bad souvenir._ Yet her body feels scrubbed and steamed and brand new. Her chest feels light and easy, like a stone has been lifted off of it. She was definitely a fan of sex.

Atton is deep asleep. She’s never seen him so unguarded. Usually, he slept sitting up in the pilot’s seat and had a hand on his blaster by the time she could walk through the door. She smooths the damp hair from his forehead and the slightest furrow crosses his brow at her touch. She laughs—it feels so frictionless and natural!—but it comes out more as a coo. He doesn’t hear. His face is placid once again.

He looks so innocent. So beautiful. From the day she met Atton, she has seen this goodness shining through him. She wants him to see it, too. His presence in the Force was usually a barely audible, simmering unrest, but now she senses only pleasant oblivion. She doesn’t want to disturb his peace.

She continues to feel his peaceful sleep from her bunk, but something is different. There’s a sadness, a longing in their bond. She tries to let go, let sleep take her before she has to face what she already knows.

It’s hers.

Across the ship, Atton wakes to empty arms.


	6. Chapter 6

**6.**

**Atton**

“There’s nothing worse you can do to me.” He says it with the freedom of a man who knows it’s true.

It’s almost funny, almost a relief, knowing this moment has finally come. Death. Atonement. How many hours had he spent torturing Jedi? Now to die as a Jedi at the hands of a Sith—it was too good. There was some justice in this fucked up Galaxy after all. _Call it “the Force,”_ he thinks bitterly. 

Snorting, Atton meets the Sith Lord’s mismatched eyes without fear. “Take your time.”

And it takes a long time. Every second he wants to die, but he can’t. He’s failed her. He doesn’t even know if she’s alive… or suffering. As his skin blisters and his wounds weep, as Sion tortures his mind in places he had just begun to know through the Force, it is the knowledge of this final failure that tears at his heart, keeping him alive.


	7. Chapter 7

**7.**

**Meetra**

“You’re… alive. Did… I… save you yet?” She falls to her knees, not comprehending what she sees. _Atton?_ The right half of his face is cracked and charred. The eye orbit is crushed, what she can see of the eye looks opaque and dead… like Sion’s. As she pulls him onto her lap, her arm passes through air where his left arm should have been. The arm that cradles his head is covered in warm, flowing blood, and he must have a dozen other wounds. As her shock subsides, she starts to hyperventilate and her eyes fill with tears.

“Your eyes… that bad, eh?” For his sake, she tries to blink back her horror. For her sake, and with strength he does not have, he tries to turn away from her. She places her palm against his face to keep him still, running her thumb along his unwounded cheek. She wants to look into his working eye, but he won’t meet hers. “Always was ugly… now the outside matches. I was waiting for this, but… it’s not fair… let you down…”

His suffering is pounding through their bond. She meets it with Force healing but it’s like trying to dam a waterfall with her bare hands. His physical agony is beyond imagining—she doesn’t know how she's even tolerating the echoes she feels through the Force. But worse is how he hates himself for it, blames himself for failing. He’s much too weak to hide his thoughts from her now, but it hurts like a dagger to the chest when she feels him trying.

“Save your strength, Atton—we can heal you.” Healing energy is pouring through her entire being, but she feels it passing through him like sieve. He’s not accepting it.

He scoffs weakly. “I was s’posed to save _you_. Tired of living, anyway… too many deaths…” She closes her eyes. How can she ask him to go on like this? And yet a firm answer comes from inside her: _He is going to live._

“You did save me. You’ve saved my life a dozen times in battle, and you were my first friend since I was exiled.”

“I… never told you… lied to you…” He winces painfully. “I don’t want you to see me like this. I don’t want to die in front of you. Can’t bear it.”

“You’re not going to die, Atton!” She’s getting panicked.

“Loved you from the moment I first saw you. Thought you were a dream…meant every word… tried to play it off as a joke… wasn’t funny…”

The memory hits fresh, cutting through the grim circumstances just as the lame crack did on Peragus. A sad gasp of laughter escapes her. “It was to me. Remember?” Raw, ragged joy shines from her smile and seems to warm his cold face. “Heh,” he makes to laugh and shudders in pain. “Hurts… when I laugh…” His voice is barely audible.

She pulls him closer. Now both arms, her chest, and her cheek are covered in his rapidly cooling blood. He’s slipping away in the Force and everything in her resists. It seems so obvious now. “Atton, I love you, too. For a long time. I’m sorry it took me so long to realize.” Her eyes squeeze shut in regret and grief.

She brings her lips to his, kissing him even though he’s too weak to reciprocate, desperately trying to feel the life force that had riveted her to them on the floor of the Ebon Hawk’s cockpit just a few weeks ago. She knows, not through the Force, but from her own will, that that spark is _not_ dying. She whispers into his ear like a prayer, hoping against hope, “Atton, I love you so much. I need you. You can live. Let me heal you.” He’s unresponsive. Cradling his body and gazing into his mangled face, she weeps.

Even in the face of her determination to save him, the grief is so enormous that it breaks her open. In her raw state she can feel the Force saturating them, more freely available than she has ever felt it before. Dark or Light, it does not matter—it is all just the Force. She straightens, places her hands over his chest, and channels it all into him. She is heartened when she feels it collecting in him, but he needs so much more.

Every one of her thousands of meditation sessions had begun with the instruction to “drop all barriers to the Force.” She knows now with utter clarity that she has never done this before. And she knows now why she didn’t. In a way, she has always known where her barriers were. She didn’t take them down because _she_ had put them there, to protect herself. It had felt so important at the time. Probably it was, but what matters now is that there is a way to save Atton. She lets the Force pour into the cracks in her, opening completely to the pain, the grief, the joy, the love, the longing, the fear. They grow in her until there is nothing left that separates her from the Force, from this place, from…

_The mother who held her frightened son to her breast as the ground cracked opened green beneath them…. The teenager with his girlfriend in the woods by cover of darkness, whose last, confused thought as gravity crushes them is that he’s being punished for sneaking out... The strangers on a transport who hold one another as the walls of the ship crumple like a tin can... The man who dies alone, ripped apart by gravity shear, consumed with regret… The baby who barely knows this world before she is closing her eyes for the last time…_

She feels them all. All the grief she has stored inside her. All the lives on her hands. Except there is no “her” to feel it—she is the Force. And the Force is dressing its wounds.


	8. Chapter 8

**8.**

**Atton**

He woke first to a timeless void without any memory or identity. Slowly, he became aware of something warm and the urge to be near it. Now, after remembering who he is, he recognizes the other presence as her. Perhaps he feels her in the Force, or maybe just her hand in his. He recalls now that the hand she’s holding is his only hand. He still feels the other at his side, but he also feels the ache in his stump below the shoulder. He hadn’t spared the lost arm a second thought when it was severed from him, so sure he had been that he couldn’t take it where he was going.

It occurs to him that he has eyes. Well, at least one. The feeling in the other is strange. He gropes in his mind to remember how to open them, as if he can’t find the switch in the dark. When he finally does, the reality of the medbay falls on him. _I’m really not dead, huh?_ Beside him, her aura swirls pink and orange as she sees his open eyes and feels his wakefulness in the Force. She squeezes his hand as tears fill her eyes, tinging the swelling mass of color around her with blue-green relief.

“Atton! Atton, I’m here. Can you hear me?” He tries to turn to her, tries to speak, but actions don’t come easily. He grunts. He feels her watery smile in the Force. It’s bright yellow, but rippled and thin. “It’s okay, Atton.” She’s trying to calm him. He’s suddenly aware of his chest and face by the tension in them. He relaxes, and a word rises naturally to his lips, reminding him how to speak.

“Meetra…” She leans in to hear him, not daring to breathe. “What drugs do they have me on?” he mumbles, and loses consciousness.

***

He’s more coherent when he wakes again. Coherent and _cognizant_ of his ruined body. Everything burns or aches, even his missing arm. He thinks he was stabbed clean through just beneath the right side of his ribs. The left side of his face is on fire and his eye socket feels like it’s been crushed and stuck back together, yet somehow he is seeing the Force through the bandages…? They’ve covered the reflective surfaces around him, so he knows it’s bad.

“How’s your pain?” she asks.

“Tolerable.” It’s just barely true. He gives a slightly forced smile as proof. “How did I get here?”

“Do you remember when I found you?” He grunts in acknowledgment. _I remember the things I said._ His worst fear hasn't come to pass-- she's still here-- but there’s something distinctly uncomfortable about having to answer for his dying words.

“After you lost consciousness, Mira and Mical found us. You were still in rough shape, but I had healed you well enough that Mical could carry you. I was on the edge of consciousness, but I was able to lean on Mira until we got to the Hawk. I think I passed out the minute Mical got you in this bed. Woke up two days later. Mical treated you with Force healing, kolto patches, serums for the pain-- you’d have to ask him for more details.”

 _No thanks._ “What happened to you? I remembered you being okay.” It had been his greatest comfort.

A bemused look comes over her face and she shakes her head. “I don’t really know. I was trying with everything I had to heal you, and it wasn’t working. I was desperate and my heart was breaking…” He thinks he remembers this, but in his mind it’s jumbled up with random other memories like… riding a transport? “It broke me open-- it’s like all the barriers between me and the Force broke down. I always thought Revan was being grandiose when he said he “was” the Force, but that’s how it felt—there was no _me_ and there was only the Force. Suddenly there was so much power all around me, and I put it all into you. It took a lot out of me, but I just needed to rest.” She squeezes his hand again.

“Meetra, I…” With difficulty, he turns onto his uninjured cheek to look at her for the first time since Malachor. It’s easier after having confessed once, after dying for a spell, but only if he does it _now_.

His declaration is arrested for a moment longer when he sees her through the Force. She radiates love and joy like a sun, and yet she also pulls in the Force around her like a vortex. He recognizes the current of him to her. And deep within her—deeper than he should be able to see, deeper than a person should be able to go—there is something hurt and _wrong_ in the Force. Even with all he’s just endured, he marvels that she has carried this weight for 10 minutes, let alone 10 years. He’s never been more sure of what he’s about to tell her.

“Yes?”

“ _I love you_. I meant every word of what I said on Malachor. I shouldn’t have needed to be dying to spit it out. I should have told you before I… before we…”

"And I should have known." She smiles good-naturedly. “I guess this means you don’t remember my confession. Or all the times I’ve told you as you lay here in the medbay—including the times you woke up before and confessed to me again.” Her laugh is light as air. She squeezes his hand as her tone becomes serious. “I love you, too. For a long time. I was just a dumb Jedi who didn’t recognize love until it was dying in my arms.”

Amazingly, her answer doesn’t come as a surprise. Maybe he did hear her before, or maybe his self-loathing had blinded him as much as her ignorance had blinded her. Part of him knew that he couldn't make love to her one-sided. _We are in love._ They have been in love. All he has to do is accept it.

He has to ask her, because he can’t do it himself. “Will you kiss me?” And her lips are on his.

***

It’s another week before they take off the bandages and let him see. Much as the others joke about his lax hygiene, Atton has always been vain. The slashes and stab wound scars he can live with—he’s already kind of proud of them—but he could tell he wasn't going to get away with one of those tasteful, character-imbuing facial scars. He had had a week to assess the damage through his wrappings, but of course nothing could prepare him. The bones of his right eye orbit were still aching and throbbing, but they seemed to have set normally. The skin, however, is a different story. The skin is cracked and rough from around the orbit down to the middle of his cheek and reaching horizontally as far as the hairline above his right ear in some places. It's still raw, but it’s already clear that it will heal cracked and grey, like Sion’s. _Like a mirror? Not quite, buddy._

“You’re doing it again.”

“Sorry.” She fixes her gaze straight ahead in her chair. It’s sweet how she’s trying to respect his sensitivity. It’s even sweeter how she’s already stealing glances again with that adoring expression. “I’m just so happy you’re healing. And what can I say? I’m _in love_ with you—” she bites her lip playfully, “I want to look at you.”

“You can admit it. You’re thrilled that now you don’t have to choose between my good looks and your Sith boyfriend’s.”

She punctuates her confused expression with a musical “What?”

He pulls a grim expression and effects an accent that manages to startle her. “I lowve you, Exahle.”

She feels the laugh coming and breathes deep through her nose to steady herself. There’s a twisted pleasure on his face as he dares her to laugh at his disfigurement. Her lips flatten and her face is getting red as her breaths get shaky. She buries her face in an uninjured portion of his chest just as a few shudders escape.

“You’re lucky you got me from the waist down.” She breaks. She convulses with laughter on top of him, and he feels it reverberating through his chest. It causes a pleasant sort of pain, like a massage, where it passes through his wounds. He places his remaining arm around her and rubs her back. She rises, sighing out enough of the laughter to return to gazing at his face. “I love you.”

Her expression is pure goodness and her face is beautific. He’s scarred, ruined. All he wanted on Malachor was for her to let him die. His final humiliation was that he couldn’t keep her from seeing the weakness and ugliness inside. And here he is, and here she is looking into his gruesome face with undeniable love.

He laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I owe Atton's scarred appearance to sovonight on tumblr, who has many delightful Atton/Exile illustrations and musings! https://sovonight.tumblr.com/post/187554826910/scarred-atton-au-w-the-grey-feature-pazaak
> 
> I made Atton's Force sight less like it's shown in the game and more like Force synesthesia.


End file.
